The advent of the World Wide Web offers new opportunities for people to share information, opinions, and experiences on virtually any topic. With the support of web-based systems and methodologies, people with common goals and interests can interact and communicate instantaneously from anywhere on the globe.
Many web sites exist to serve a particular group of people who share common goals or attributes. Key to these activities is the sharing of data, whether quantitative or qualitative, in order to harness the wisdom of crowds to reach sound decisions.
Conventional interactive forums suffer from the fact that only a small subset of users contribute their data (e.g., numerical data such as salaries or qualitative data such as hotel reviews), which can potentially lead to bias and limit the ability of a user to draw valid conclusions from the shared dataset. Research suggests that participation in data-sharing platforms such as YOUTUBE®, WIKIPEDIA®, or PATIENTSLIKEME® is a more exaggerated form of the Pareto Principle, wherein 80% of data is contributed by 20% of users. This phenomenon has been referred to as “participation inequality”. Although robust statistics are not available, it has been estimated by many leaders in the field that a tiny proportion of users (approximately 1-5%) account for product reviews, article edits, blog posts, forum posts, and the like.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods for encouraging of data submission in online communities.